The Sound Reader

Exciting news! I am now a direct pay provider through Step Up! If you are a scholarship recipient, you can now search for The Sound Reader under the providers tab and your lessons can be paid directly from your scholarship funds.

In-person time slots are FULL, but I do have a few openings for Zoom lessons (and yes, online tutoring is just as successful as in-person, even with neurodivergent and/or young learners. ☺️).

If your student is struggling to read, please reach out! I'd love to help your student become a strong and confident reader!

Due to increasing demand, I have added a few more openings to my Zoom availability. Please reach out with any questions or if you'd like to schedule an initial assessment!

I get asked a lot how parents can support their preschool aged kids and make sure they are prepared for school. This can be a complicated question and very much depends on the individual child, but I always start with this: kindergarteners do not NEED to enter school knowing how to read, knowing all of their letter names and sounds, etc. Focusing on academics too early can have the opposite effect from what is desired and intended.

But, I follow up with this: what IS an excellent use of academic time at that age is to play games with the sounds in our language. Kids love it and it is invaluable to their future reading skills! For example, you can have the child guess the word you are saying when you only say the sounds of the word, e.g., you say, "/f/ /i/ /sh/" then ask the child what word you just said. They have to figure out how to blend the sounds in order to know what the word is.

Training the ear to hear the separate sounds in words is the first step to being able to read successfully and this is an easy and fun way to do it. It also works very well for older children who are still struggling to learn how to read. They likely need the practice just as much!

Middle of the year state testing has recently wrapped up and I couldn’t resist giving a shout out to two of my students!

Congratulations, Braeden for moving from a one to a two in reading!

And congratulations to Avery from moving from a one to a THREE in reading!

You guys are working so hard and I am so proud of how far you have come! 😊🥳